LONDON, Jan 29:
A small pilot study in the UK suggests that some people with long Covid may have hidden damage to their lungs.
The study focused on 11 people who had not required hospital care when they first caught Covid but experienced long-lasting breathlessness after their initial infection.
The team, from Oxford, Sheffield, Cardiff and Manchester compared novel xenon gas scan and other lung-function tests in three groups of people.
This included people with long Covid and breathlessness who had not been admitted to hospital when infected, 12 people who had been admitted to hospital with Covid but did not have long Covid, and 13 healthy people as “controls”, reports BBC.
Using the novel approach, all participants inhaled xenon gas during a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan.
Researchers found that for the majority of people with long Covid, gas transfer was less effective than in healthy controls and for people who had been admitted to hospital for Covid had similar abnormalities.
It was frustrating having people coming into clinic and not being able to explain to them exactly why it was that they were breathless, Dr Emily Fraser, lead researcher and lung specialist said. Often X-rays and CT scans show no abnormalities.
A larger, more detailed study is under way to confirm the results, reports BBC. (UNI)
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